Evren ran his hand over his freshly shaved face and then through the hair on his head. “My head feels cooler.” He said with a smile. “He looked at Isabel and said, “How do I look?”
Evren’s dark brown hair was neatly trimmed and combed back over his head, a few strands hung down over his forehead, none long enough to reach his eyes. His eyes were a light blue, and his face, although blocky was handsome and had a chiseled look to it. Combined with his height and his muscles he was certainly an attractive man.
“Less like a vagabond.” Isabel replied with a smile.
Evren stood up, and said, “Thank you miss. I look less like a vagabond now.”
Harley smiled with a blush and said, “My pleasure.”
Evren turned to Joseph, “Do you mind if I show my tools to this man before he hurts himself?”
Joseph looked to the blacksmith who had only moved the cart about five meters and was still inching it forward very slowly. “I think that would probably be for the best. We’ll send Harley to fetch you from the blacksmith when dinner is ready.”
Evren was surprised at the mention of dinner and looked to the ‘sky’ to see that the sun was now past noon. He nodded and headed towards the wagon. With one hand, he lifted the pull poles up and with the other he held the man’s shoulder. “I’ll show you now, you don’t need to pull anymore. Just show me to your shop.”
The man looked at the pull poles lifted up and took a couple awkward steps forward before he fully comprehended what Evren had said. “Yes! This way!” he said and headed off towards the shop.
Evren laughed and lowered the pull poles down to the normal level he kept them at and pulled the wagon along at a brisk pace to catch up with the man. The man realized he had been walking fast and turned around to make sure that Evren hadn’t gotten lost and was startled to see Evren not too far behind him, keeping the same pace. His eyes opened wide, and he slowed down a bit before a big smile came to his face and he turned around to head to his shop.
The shop was an open-air shop, as it didn’t rain in the dungeon. The forge was rather crude and many of the tools had been worn down to the point where they were almost not useable. Evren adjusted the wagon, so the back was to the shop and began pulling the boxes out. He set them to the side, and climbed into the wagon, opening the false floor, exposing the tools. He took out several pouches that the tools were wrapped in and set them on the false floor behind him. He then grabbed the leather sack the anvil was stored in and pushed it to the back of the wagon.
He climbed out of the wagon and looked around for a log to use to set the anvil on. He asked the blacksmith, “Um… blacksmith, do you have a log I can set the anvil on?”
The man looked at Evren, “Blacksmith? OH! My name is Levi. Yes. Yes. One second I’ll get one from around the back.”
The man ran off and returned rolling a 40 cm diameter log, that was just about the same size in height. He set it up by the forge and backed away.
Evren opened the sack the anvil was in and pulled out four metal stakes, setting them aside. He then pulled the anvil out of the bag and walked it over to the log, setting it on top. Levi’s eyes wide and focused on the anvil the whole way. Evren walked back over to the wagon and unwrapped one of the pouches that had a hammer in it and brought it, and the four stakes over to the anvil to secure it to the log. After hammering the stakes in, he handed the hammer to the wide-eyed Levi, who accepted it.
“Actual dwarven tools. Amazing.” Evren smiled and walked over to the wagon, retrieving the other tools, and set them down on the table, unrolling all the pouches to display all of his tools. The man was stunned.
“Levi. That’s your name?” Evren asked.
“Yes, that’s right. I’m Levi.” The man replied.
“I’m Evren.” He held out his hand in greetings. The man took his hand and shook it, not letting go of the hammer in his other hand.
“I wonder, Levi, if you could make something for me using my tools. I’ve only been smithing for a little while and I’ve yet to watch someone else make something.” Evren said, turning to the arriving Joseph. He walked over to Joseph and leaned in to his ear, “Levi is a man, right?” Joseph nodded with a smile.
Evren turned back to Levi, “What’ll it be?”
Levi nodded, “Yes… Let’s see. Hmm? A knife? Yes, I’ll make a knife.”
Levi grabbed a rough chunk of iron Evren assumed to be a bloom and set it into the forge. When it was hot enough, he beat it with the hammer Evren had provided on the runed anvil. He would hammer it until the temperature dropped down, place it back into the forge to heat up, pulling on the bellows. When it was hot enough, he would hammer it some more.
When he got it flat enough, he used another tool to cut away some parts to make the tang of the knife and roughly shaped the blade. He heated some more and hammered the blade to refine the shape and get it closer to the knife shape he was looking for. When he was satisfied with the shape, he heated the metal, and quenched it in some water nearby.
He put the blade into a vice and grabbed one of Evren’s files to file the edge of the blade until a rough edge was made, then went to the grinding wheel to further refine it. When he finished that, he sharpened the blade with some stones and finally handed the mostly finished blade to Evren. Evren examined the knife. It was a single edged knife that could be found in any kitchen. The metal seemed a bit unrefined, but the blade itself was well made.
Harley had arrived around this time and tapped Joseph’s shoulder. Joseph called out to Evren to let him know dinner was prepared. Evren turned back to Levi and handed the knife back to him. “Thank you for the demonstration. I wonder if you could keep my tools for the moment, I am going to eat dinner and probably get some rest. I’ll come by tomorrow to chat with you about smithing.
Levi nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, of course. I’ll take good care of your tools. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
Evren thought that Levi had drifted his focus away from Evren about halfway through that sentence and smiled, turning to Joseph and nodding. He walked around to the front of the wagon and turned it around to head to Joseph’s home.
As they headed towards the house, Joseph asked Evren, “What do you think of Levi’s ability?”
Evren nodded, “He has a solid foundation, but he’s missing a few steps. Its fine if he wants to use the bloom for a knife, but he should hammer out the impurities first, otherwise he needs to melt it down and add limestone or quicklime to it to clean out the impurities.”
Joseph asked Evren, “Is that something he can do?”
Evren nodded, “Oh yeah. Easily enough. I suppose the issue is whether you have quicklime or not.” Evren looked around, “I don’t suppose you have any limestone sources, or chalk, seashells, eggshells, something along that nature.”
Joseph nodded, “We do have eggshells, but we don’t use them and usually throw them away.”
“Ah.” Evren said as he nodded, “I suppose it’s something that can be saved up in the future.”
Harley asked, “Can eggshells make better knives?”
Evren nodded again, “Yes. From what I remember from the documentaries I watched, it helps to remove excess carbon, silicon, sulfur and phosphorus from the iron.”
“What is a documentary?” Harley asked.
Evren thought for a moment, “It is a show that explains how things work.”
“A show? Do you mean like a play?” she replied.
Evren slowly shook his head as he thought about how to respond, “No, more like a lecture from school.”
“Oh! Mr. Evren have you been to school?” Harley asked.
Without thinking, Evren replied, “Oh yeah, I got a doctorate at university in languages.”
Harley looked at Joseph, who shrugged, then back to Evren with a confused look, but then smiled brightly, “Mr. Evren must as smart as he is strong.”
Evren responded with only a shrug.
When they arrived at Joseph’s home, Evren left the wagon out front and followed Joseph inside. The inside of the home was illuminated only from the light coming from the windows. A long table had been set with two rows of tableware. Joseph sat at the end, with a seat reserved for Isabel to his right. Evren wasn’t sure where to sit until Harley prompted him to sit between her and Joseph. Evren noticed the two additional prepared seats and questioned Joseph with a gesture.
Joseph smiled and said, “Those two are for my son and his wife, Harley’s parents. They’ll be along shortly.”
At that moment a man and woman entered through the door, Isabel going to greet them. The man kissed Isabel’s cheek and said, “Hi mom.” The two women gave each other a hug.
Evren stood when the two arrived and turned to face them. The man walked over to Evren, holding his hand out in greetings, “You must be the adventurer everyone’s talking about. My name is Pascal.”
Evren took his hand with a smile and replied, “I’m Evren. Good to meet you.”
As their greetings finished, the two women came over chatting to themselves. Pascal said, “This is my wife, Amelia.”
Evren shook her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Evren.”
Amelia replied, saying, “Hello Evren. I see you’ve met our daughter. Harley, mind your manners.”
“Mom! I’m being good!” the girl replied.
Amelia leaned in and said, “She can be such a tomboy.”
Evren smiled at her and said, “My daughter was the same, she had three older brothers and never really liked dresses. Took more after me than her mother.”
Amelia said, “Oh! You’re married?”
Evren replied with a sad smile, “Was. She passed away I guess around eighty years ago.”
Everyone was stunned speechless, and Evren didn’t know how to proceed in the conversation, when Joseph stepped forward saying, “Uh, Evren is… well, he’s a summoned.” He cleared his throat, “For now, we should eat dinner, and perhaps talk about it later.”
Joseph’s son, Pascal said, “Right. Sorry, we should eat first.”
Everyone sat at the table except for Isabel and Amelia who started to bring food out to the table. Evren didn’t touch the food right away, as he knew during diplomatic education in the military, there were some cultures who prayed before a meal, or said some words before taking food and didn’t want to insult anyone. When he saw that Joseph and Harley were putting food on their plates, he did as well.
He wasn’t sure what he was eating, but he had eaten some strange things out of desperation both while in the military, and since coming to this world. He was sure that whatever it was he would probably have no issues in eating it.
Joseph said, “I’m sorry for the lack of meat, we do have livestock, but their numbers are few right now and we’re waiting for the next generation to get older.” Evren shook his head. “It’s fine. I’ve been eating nothing but dried food for a while now. Fresh anything is better than what I’ve been eating.”
Evren looked to Pascal and asked, “You said adventurer, correct? I don’t… I don’t know what that is. Could you explain?”
Pascal looked at his father then back to Evren, “Yeah, sure. Um, and adventurer is someone who works for the adventurer’s guild.” Evren’s blank stare and silence made Pascal aware he needed further explanation. “The adventurer’s guild takes requests from people and lets adventurers do the jobs based upon difficulty and skill of the adventurer.”
Evren nodded, “So something like day laborers. I see. What kind of jobs do adventurers do?”
Pascal shrugged and said nervously, “Ahh, this is just what I’ve heard but there are general jobs around town, hunting jobs for food or materials, extermination jobs for monsters and escort jobs for merchants and nobles.”
Evren looked up towards the ceiling as he thought about what Pascal had said, “I see. I suppose I could be an adventurer. Is there an adventurer’s guild here in town?”
Joseph replied, “There used to be an outpost of the adventurer’s guild here in Anbuton, but the main guild was up in the fortress. After the invasion it was determined that a guild wasn’t needed down here, so it shut down.”
Everyone had gotten food and had started eating, so Evren followed suit. He took a bite of his food and closed his eyes and nodded before continuing to eat. He looked at Isabel and said, “It’s delicious, thank you.”
After a peaceful dinner with idle conversation, everyone sat in the room with a couple of couches. There were some extra chairs so everyone could have a comfortable seat.
Evren figured it was his time to tell his story. Therefore, he started, “As Joseph mentioned before, I was summoned to this world…”
